While the concept of green infrastructure is becoming increasingly popular, practitioners and institutions that implement it have varying perspectives on its meaning. This case study aimed to understand how a medium-sized municipality defines green infrastructure as a concept and incorporates it into official policies and related development plans to encourage green stormwater management strategies. It further sought to understand how the analyzed policies and related plans stimulate low impact development implementation in response to climate change adaptation efforts. A content analysis of eight official documents was conducted to determine how the City of St. Catharines, Ontario defines green infrastructure and includes it in its policies and plans. NVivo 12 was used to gather the meaning of green infrastructure and related terms qualitatively. The findings discuss how green infrastructure was defined and incorporated, as well as the consistency of its usage and meaning across the sampled official documents.

Climactic changes are having devastating impacts on communities and improved collaborative decision-making is required to govern the changing social-ecological system. This research sought to expand understanding of collaborative governance as it relates to social-ecological complex adaptive systems by using a network perspective to examine governance network properties in relation to adaptive governance and social-ecological fit. The collaborative flood planning network in the St. John River Basin was collected and analyzed both independently and within a multilevel social-ecological network. Analysis displayed a broad range of organizations within the network, a tendency for transitivity, and limited social-ecological fit. While collaboration aids in adaptive governance in the basin, the network was strongly impacted by varying jurisdictional roles, responsibilities, and resources. This research contributes to the growing body of literature on network governance for social-ecological systems and further questions the role of top-down governance within collaborative arrangements.

Over the past two centuries, atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations have increased due to anthropogenic activities. In addition, global temperatures have also been rising and are expected to continue to increase into the next century. Southern Ontario, Canada is predicted to experience increasing temperatures and decreasing amounts of growing season precipitation in the coming decades. Silvicultural techniques, such as variable retention harvesting (VRH), are a possible method to aid in climate change mitigation and increase forest carbon sequestration. The aim of this study was to determine the impacts of VRH and climate change on the growth and carbon sequestration of red pine (Pinus resinosa) plantation trees in southern Ontario, Canada, using a randomized design in which five harvesting treatments (unharvested control (CN), 33% aggregated crown retention (33A), 55% aggregated crown retention (55A), 33% dispersed crown retention (33D), and 55% dispersed crown retention (55D)) were applied. In order to assess the climatic drivers of growth and the impact of VRH on red pine growth, dendrochronological methods and allometric growth equations were utilized. The main climatic drivers of tree growth are May-July standard precipitation evapotranspiration index with 3-month memory (SPEI3), growing season average maximum temperature between the months of May to August, and total precipitation in May and June. Analysis of tree growth following VRH, indicates that dispersed retention is the only treatment that led to changing growth response to climate post-harvest. VRH was found to facilitate growth, annual biomass, carbon content, and carbon sequestration, but only in dispersed treatments. The highest increase in growth was seen in the 33D treatment, whereas aggregated treatments showed diminished growth post-harvest. Finally, exterior trees within aggregated treatments showed significantly higher growth and carbon sequestration when compared to interior trees. These results suggest that dispersed treatments are the optimal choice when the goal of VRH is to increase growth and carbon sequestration of red pine plantation trees. This work adds to our understanding of the effectiveness of VRH on above-ground carbon sequestration in a common afforestation species in the Great Lakes region, which will ultimately aid in informing future forest management practices in southern Ontario.

The integrity of freshwater ecosystems is being challenged, mainly due to the failures of the traditional command-and-control governance approach. A social ecological resilience approach to water resources management (water resilience) has been proposed to help mitigate these challenges. To effectively implement this approach, individual endorsement and attitudes to water resilience and its underlying principles must be better understood; however, very little research has examined individual attitudes towards this concept. This thesis studied the extent to which individuals endorse (support and agree with) managing and governing water resources using a social ecological resilience approach. To explore and determine endorsement of water resilience, a quantitative vignette questionnaire was utilized in a single exploratory case study in the Town of Lincoln, Ontario. The vignette questionnaire was developed based on the seven underlying principles of social ecological resilience and elicited responses for both local and non-local water contexts. Demographic data was also collected to examine how they relate to endorsement scores. Overall, respondents indicated a medium level of endorsement for the water resilience principles, with lower endorsement for the local than the non-local context. However, the extent of endorsement for the resilience principles differed as a function of location, the type of water challenge, individual experiences, and the conceptualization of the resilience principles. Those with higher overall endorsement scores tended to be female, older and attached more meaning to water bodies. Sex, political ideology and attaching meaning to local water bodies emerged as important predictors of water resilience endorsement. The vignette questionnaire proposes a suitable methodological framework for determining and measuring endorsement levels for the resilience principles. A factor analysis showed the seven resilience principles as consisting of two major components: principles related to ‘the system being governed’ and principles related to the ‘governance system’. The results of this thesis provide useful insights to policy makers/planners in developing more adaptive, integrative and resilient water governance approaches tailored to align with particular community perceptions and demographics. For future research, the nuances of endorsement, as well as additional factors like personality and psychological factors that may influence endorsement levels, should be considered.

Understanding the state of environment is foundational to environmental management. There is a clear need for enhanced ecosystem status assessments. At the same time, there are scholarly trends toward incorporating the social sciences in environmental management. Evidently, there is a need for more ecological as well as social knowledge of the state of our ecosystems. This thesis examines how the state of the environment is understood through an ecological and social perspective. Emphasis is placed on ecological measures as well as perceptions, with specific attention to intergroup differences and the influences of an interpretive program. Two studies were conducted at the Niagara Glen Nature Reserve, a protected area in the Niagara Region of Canada. The first study consisted of an ecological assessment and a survey administered to experts and visitors. The ecological assessment of the state of the environment was compared to expert perception-based assessments. Perceptions were also compared between experts and visitors. The second study involved administering the survey to individuals receiving two different educational interventions, thereby exploring the influence of an environmental interpretive program on how people perceive the environment. Overall results from the two studies show that expert perception-based methods of environmental status can be a proxy for ecological data in cases where perceptions align with ecological measures, and can be used to complement ecological data in cases where perceptions are at odds with ecological measures. Visitors’ overall perceptions differed significantly from ecological measures, regardless of an interpretive program, and in fact, an interpretive program increased the difference. Visitors and experts were also found to differ significantly in their perceptions, a meaningful finding for resolving intergroup conflicts and for building a common understanding. Findings from the research can improve status assessments, address intergroup conflicts, develop a better sense of the people that interact with a natural site, inform areas for education efforts, and enhance the effectiveness of education programs. This thesis highlights the value in comparing perceptions to ecological measures and emphasizes the importance of evidence from natural and social sciences to managing social-ecological systems.

Climate change (CC) is currently impacting and will continue to affect the international and the Canadian wine industry in the future. Understanding how Canadian winegrowers perceive CC and address its consequences through adaptation can help support the grape and wine industry in the context of CC. The thesis aimed to understand how winegrowers perceive CC and the ways CC adaptation is occurring throughout Canada. Two studies were conducted in the provinces of Ontario, British Columbia, Québec and Nova Scotia. The first study of this thesis characterizes winegrowers with respect to their environmental values, CC knowledge and beliefs, and their perception of the consequences of CC on their winegrowing operations. The second study describes the present state of CC adaptation in the Canadian wine industry, as well as the adaptation strategies currently used and considered for future implementation to cope with specific weather events associated with CC. This study also investigates the attributes that drive CC adaptation throughout the country. Together, the two studies provide an overview of CC perception and adaptation in the main winegrowing provinces of Canada for the first time in literature. The thesis also contributes to the scholarly literature on CC perception and adaptation by highlighting the drivers that influence winegrowers’ adoption – or lack thereof – of adaptation practices in their operations. It also offers practical information that can be used by stakeholders of the industry to communicate CC information and adopt new practices to address its effects.

Current rates of environmental degradation demand changes to the way in which food is produced. Transforming agricultural production requires both the development and the adoption of new practices that facilitate high yields at least environmental cost. Many beneficial practices have already been developed and their limited adoption now constrains their potential to deliver sustainable agriculture. Greater understanding is needed of why farmers decide to adopt or reject different practices. The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) has been used in an agricultural context to examine adoption. The TAM posits that perceptions of a practice’s usefulness (PU) and its ease of use (PEOU) drive its adoption. In this thesis, the TAM was first revised such that adoption was considered as being composed of five stages to reflect the preparatory and trial phases that precede the full-scale adoption of agricultural practices. An empirical study was then conducted to investigate farmers’ attitudes in the Southern Ontario region towards agrominerals and cover cropping – two practices that show promise in maintaining soil health at low environmental cost. PU and PEOU were found to be significant drivers of the adoption of agrominerals. However, PEOU did not have a significant direct effect on farmers’ decisions to continue using cover crops. A longitudinal study that applies the revised TAM is needed to ascertain whether it is effective in explaining the adoption process, particularly in the latter stages of adoption when PEOU appears to be of less importance and PU alone appears to largely drive farmers’ decision-making. The concern participants showed for the potential environmental impacts of agriculture highly varied with those showing greater concern reporting greater intentions of adopting agrominerals. Socio-economic and agro-ecological factors were found not to be correlated to adoption. This study demonstrated the need to increase knowledge sharing between farmers and scientists to facilitate the transition towards sustainable agricultural production.

Previous research suggests climate warming during the current century is likely to lead to an increase in the frequency and severity of wildfire. Recent wildfire seasons in northern Canada generally support these studies, with some of the worst fire seasons on record occurring during the past few years. While we can readily track the spatial and temporal distribution of these events during recent decades using satellite-derived data, the historical records of past fire activity are relatively short. Proxy records of past fire activity are needed to fully understand how fire regimes may be shifting in response to the changing climatic conditions. A high-resolution fire record, dating back to the early Holocene, has been reconstructed using a 512-cm sediment core collected from a small lake in southwest Yukon. Macroscopic charcoal was counted throughout the core at 0.5-cm contiguous intervals. The core was also analyzed for loss-on-ignition and magnetic susceptibility. Fossil pollen preserved in the lake sediment was analyzed to determine vegetation change throughout the Holocene. Results indicate an average signal to noise index of 6.2, suggesting the peaks are significant and detectable from the slowly varying background level and the record is suitable for peak detection. Macroscopic charcoal analysis indicates an active fire history throughout the record, with 90 fires occurring throughout the Holocene. Results suggest the fire regime in this region responds to both top-down (climate) and bottom-up (vegetation) factors. Fire return intervals changed in response to shifts in precipitation and temperature as well as the expansion of lodgepole pine into the region. The shifts in precipitation and temperature were attributed to the oscillation of the Aleutian Low pressure system and fluctuations in climate associated with the Medieval Climate Anomaly and the Little Ice Age.

Coastal dune ecosystems in the Great Lakes Basin are fragile, rare ecosystems that are under increasing threat due to anthropogenic and natural forces. The Chantry Dune system in Southampton, Ontario is one of five major dune systems along the eastern shores of Lake Huron. The dune complex provides habitat for a diverse range of vegetation species, some of which are endemic, rare, and threatened. This research mapped and monitored dune vegetation change at the Chantry Dune system from 2005-2012 using multi-temporal normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) images produced from QuickBird and GeoEye-1 imagery acquired in 2005 and 2012, respectively. Next, a post-classification comparison change-detection technique was applied to determine the patterns of change in vegetation cover. Finally, the maximum-likelihood classifier (MLC) was applied to the GeoEye-1 data to produce a land-use/land-cover map. Results revealed that increased vegetation growth occurred throughout the dune system while NDVI values remained unchanged or increased slightly from 2005-2012. Application of the MLC resulted in a map output with an overall classification accuracy of 97%. The results and outcomes of this research will provide much needed baseline information, which can be used by local stakeholders and authorities to improve dune management practices.